The present invention relates to a data processing system and, more particularly, to a system and technique for automatically controlling the decoding and digitization of an analog tape.
In a variety of systems involving the acquisition of information, it is known to employ recording techniques which receive a few or large number of different analog signals representing measurements, test data, or similar information requiring additional processing. While the information is originally recorded in analog form on a tape or other recording medium, it is often desirable to convert the analog signals to digital form prior to subsequent processing with digital systems. In many instances, the information which is being acquired is of a type which is only available in a form of such analog signals, but the digital processing is required to analyze or derive or perform computations for determining other parameters of the operation and performance of the system. By way of example, information representing temperatures, pressures, flow rates, and similar parameters for engines, steam generator tubes, chemical processes, and the like are all developed from analog signals which are recorded on an analog medium prior to conversion to digital form for subsequent computations and analysis.
When acquiring such analog information, known techniques have recorded the analog information on multiple channels or tape tracks for various periods of analog data acquisition. Each period of data acquisition may be located at a certain position on each of the channels of the analog tape and that position was generally indicated by voice signals stored on the analog medium before and after the period of information recording. Subsequently, in order to digitize the acquired analog information, it was necessary to load the tape on a playing system, manually operate the tape playing system to locate individual periods of recorded analog information, record a code representing the beginning and end of each individual period, create a computer file representing each of the information periods, and manually correlate the digization of the information periods for each of the files identified from the data acquisition process. Since each tape may contain numerous periods of analog information representing a variety of data, the above technique for digitizing such data was cumbersome and time-consuming and required a substantial manual effort to implement the digitization.
In attempts to reduce the complexity of the digitization process, digital codes have been placed on one or more tracks or channels of an analog tape to incorporate identification information. For example, such codes may represent the start and stop position with respect to the period of analog data recording and thereby indicate the location of usable data on each of the tracks of the multi-channel system. While such codes may aid in the identification of the position of stored data on an analog tape, the need for operator intervention and coordination still reduces the efficiency with which the analog information can be digitized for subsequent processing.
Accordingly, the present invention has been developed to overcome the specific shortcomings of the above-known and similar techniques and to provide an improved system and technique for automatically digitizing analog information stored on an analog medium.